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The Chronicle, December 17). In an era of global expansion in higher education, accreditation agencies are increasingly confronted with myriad challenges surrounding various forms of distance education (whether virtual, so-called branch campuses, or study abroad) and cross-institutional certification.

the American Academy for Liberal Education is particularly well placed to view this changing pedagogical and institutional landscape, both domestically and worldwide.

AALE goes several steps further in evaluating whether institutions meet an extensive set of pedagogical standards specifically related to liberal education—standards of effective reasoning, for instance, and broad and deep learning. This level of assessment requires extensive classroom visitations, conversations with students and faculty members, and the time to assess the climate of learning at every institution we visit.

Three promising alternatives for assessing college students' knowledge and skills. (NILOA Occasional Paper No.2). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute of Learning Outcomes Assessment.

What do Wikipedia, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Threadless Tees have in common? All were created outside the traditional product development model using a mass collaborative approach. In mass collaborative product development (MCPD), large groups of people compete and collaborate globally to develop new products and services.

the MCPD phenomenon is under way in the management and business communities. But few have examined it from an engineering design standpoint.

A more natural process

Do you have ideas or examples of good practice of working with employers to promote workforce development? UK universities and colleges are under pressure to do "employer engagement" and some are finding it really difficult. This is sometimes due to the university administrative systems not welcoming non-traditional students, and sometimes because we use "university speak" rather than "employer speak". All ideas very welcome. Thanks. Posted 7 hours ago | Reply Privately /* extlib: /js_controls/_dialog.jsp */ LI.i18n.register( 'Dialog-closeWindow', 'Close this window' ); LI.i18n.register( 'Dialog-or', 'or' ); LI.i18n.register( 'Dialog-cancel', 'Cancel' ); LI.i18n.register( 'Dialog-submit', 'Submit' ); LI.i18n.register( 'Dialog-error-generic', 'We\'re sorry. Something unexpected happened and your request could not be completed. Please try again.' ); LI.Controls.addControl('control-7', 'Dialog', { name: 'sendMessageDialog', type: 'task-modeless', content: { node: 'send-message-dialog', title: 'Reply Privately' }, extra: { memberId: '19056441', fullName: 'Anita Pickerden', groupId: '2774663', subject: 'RE: Do you have ideas or examples of good practice of working with employers to promote workforce development?' } });

xperts do not agree on the precise numbers, but over the past generation we have moved from an environment in which states paid for 70 percent of cost and students paid 30 percent, to a situation in which those numbers have exactly reversed. Increasingly, tuition accounts for the lion’s share of institutional budgets, with state appropriations playing a minority role.

The sense I got Friday was that higher-education professionals do not expect the ”good old days” to return

the apparent consensus that public education needs to be more productive, because there was no discussion of the definition of productivity. 

A good example of this may be a learning portfolio created by a students and reviewed by an instructor. The instructor might be looking for higher orders of learning... evidence of creative thinking, of the development of complex concepts or looking for things like improvement.

There is a simple sense in which assessing people for this course involves tracking their willingness to participate in the discussion. I have claimed in many contexts that in fields in which the canon is difficult to identify, where what is 'true' is not possible to identify knowledge becomes a negotiation. This will certainly true in this course, so I think the most important part of the assessment will be whether the learner in question has collaborated, has participated has ENGAGED with the material and with other participants of the course.

What we need, then, is a peer review model for assessment. We need people to take it as their responsibility to review the work of others, to confirm their engagement, and form community/networks of assessment that monitor and help each other.

Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich argue that group dynamics are the enemy of businesses trying to develop one-of-a-kind new products, unique ways to save money or distinctive marketing strategies.

Terwiesch, Ulrich and co-author Karan Girotra, a professor of technology and operations management at INSEAD, found that a hybrid process -- in which people are given time to brainstorm on their own before discussing ideas with their peers -- resulted in more and better quality ideas than a purely team-oriented process.

Although several existing experimental studies criticize the team brainstorming process due to the interference of group dynamics, the Wharton researchers believe their work stands out due to a focus on the quality, in addition to the number, of ideas generated by the different processes -- in particular, the quality of the best idea.

Classroom Creativity

Eric Barker recently referred me to this interesting study, which looked at how elementary school teachers perceived creativity in their students. While the teachers said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they actually didn't. I

The point is that the classroom isn't designed for impulsive expression - that's called talking out of turn.